Throughout the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series we have various femme fatales who appear in each of the novels. In Vesuvius Plot we meet the femme fatale named Belona who appears to be the queen of the ancient German tribe. In the previous Roman novel, the Cherusci Plot, we met a femme fatale named Terentula who was married to the Roman governor of Trier at the time of 9 A.D and who turned traitor to the Emperor Augustus. In each case, Belona and Terentula take advantage of the men to betray them and betray their causes.

The femme fatale theme is big in the Edward Ware Thrillers at War Series. In the more contemporary port of the series the hero, Col. Sir Edward Ware, has a lifelong antipathy towards the villainess and the femme fatale, Helga von Wessel. At the same time he is the father of her only son, Leopold, and she exercises a fatal attraction of the flesh which Edward must always struggle against. He tries to be true to his wife, Dora, Lady Ware, also his fellow conspirator. He must also resist the femme fatale’s attempts to steal the Lawrence maps, key to world domination.

In the series femme fatales become part of the theme itself. They are the touchstones which the hero must struggle against discover his role, his identity, and to achieve his eventual triumph. They embody villainy itself in a very personal way.

But at the end of the series where do all these evil women go? None of them actually seems to get killed or die in the book. Even Helga von Wessel only disappears. Belona seems to be magical, almost a goddess or evil goddess in herself. Terentula is the head of the defiant political movement that will not go away will give Rome trouble in the future. I’d like to think of all three of them as someday meeting in a dark corner of the earth, or perhaps the dark side of the moon, or perhaps some lost Potemkin village in the wilds of Russia where no one else will ever find them. They can set up their own city with their own laws where all these women are in charge. They can exploit the men only in some dark fantasy but not in real life.